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February 26, 2003

INTERNATIONAL IMMUNIZATION NEWS

"Consumer Group in Italy Urges Flu Patients to Sue"

Reuters Health Information Services (www.reutershealth.com) (02/25/03); Lorenzi, Rossella

Italians who contract the flu after being vaccinated this year are being urged by the nation's leading consumer association, Codacons, to sue the government because they say the vaccine should not have been released until the final recommended component was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO).  This year's vaccine included influenza A (H1N1) and B strains, but a decision by the WHO as well as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on the third strain, influenza A/Panama/2007/99 (H3N2), was delayed until the middle of March, since late breaking information demonstrated the vaccine's ineffectiveness against some emerging variations of H3N2.  Codacons asserts that the pharmaceutical firms marketed the vaccines prematurely, and it questions the health ministry's oversight in allowing the drug makers to proceed.  In the meantime, Dr. Donato Greco, director of the Laboratory of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Italy's National Institute of Health, observed that this year's efficacy rate of the vaccine is well within average acceptable rate of 70 percent to 80 percent.

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